Decoherence in a system of many two--level atoms

Abstract

I show that the decoherence in a system of $N$ degenerate two--level atoms interacting with a bosonic heat bath is for any number of atoms $N$ governed by a generalized Hamming distance (called ``decoherence metric'') between the superposed quantum states, with a time--dependent metric tensor that is specific for the heat bath.The decoherence metric allows for the complete characterization of the decoherence of all possible superpositions of many-particle states, and can be applied to minimize the over-all decoherence in a quantum memory. For qubits which are far apart, the decoherence is given by a function describing single-qubit decoherence times the standard Hamming distance. I apply the theory to cold atoms in an optical lattice interacting with black body radiation.

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References in corpus (7)

• Experimental demonstration of quantum memory for light
• Measures and dynamics of entangled states
• Ultimate decoherence border for matter-wave interferometry
• Entanglement from thermal black body radiation
• Robustness of multi-qubit entanglement in the independent decoherence model
• Realization of a Decoherence-free, Optimally Distinguishable Mesoscopic Quantum Superposition
• Stability of Pairwise Entanglement in a Decoherent Environment

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Quantum metrology in the presence of spatially correlated noise: Restoring Heisenberg scaling
• Limitation of entanglement due to spatial qubit separation
• Decoherence of an $n$-qubit quantum memory
• Quantum Decoherence Modulated by Special Relativity
• One, Two, and $n$ Qubit Decoherence
• Indirect decoherence in optical lattices and cold gases